People that hate cats, will come back as mice in their next life. -Faith Resnick

I used to love cats. They start out as adorable kittens with little pointy tails and cute “mews”. They follow you around and cuddle up on your lap. I had cats growing up and have fond memories of them.

Notice, I said that I used to love cats. Gypsy, our current cat who is around 11 years old and has been with us for most of those 11 years, has changed my former love for cats what can only be categorized as hate. Only the guilt I know I would feel is what keeps her from being hauled off to the humane society. Seriously.

These feelings are not new. She has scratched (sometimes while standing on a scratching pad) and ruined more things in the house than I care to count. Her hairballs are disgusting and plentiful. She constantly wants in and out of the house, which would be understandable if it wasn’t between the hours of 1-5 a.m. And the feelings are mutual. She will hiss at me as she walks by for no particular reason. She has bitten me in the same manner. Right now, just to spite me I am sure, she is sitting on the back of same couch purring with her eyes closed like we are the best of friends. I am not fooled.

Last Saturday, my phone alarm went off early (5:20 a.m.) since Joe’s mom was flying in from Spokane on an early flight. I was obviously sleepy as I grabbed my phone and glasses and made my way into the bathroom and set them down on the counter like I usually do. The cat had been meowing to get in the bedroom door but since we try to discourage her from coming in that particular door, I went to the sliding glass door to let her in. As I closed the door, she ran past me, hissing first at me and then the dog as he made his way towards to door to go out. Just as I was opening the door for the second time, I heard a crash come from the bathroom. We have the cat’s food bowl up on the counter since it is the only place that Gypsy can get to her food where Tucker can not….except she is clumsy and can’t always get up all the way, especially when her feet are wet. She doesn’t fall daily by any means, but it happens often enough that I wasn’t worried especially when I saw her run back out of the bathroom.

Seeing that Tucker wasn’t coming back right away, I went back into the bathroom to brush my teeth when I noticed a black rectangle at the bottom of the toilet. It didn’t take but a few seconds for me to realize it was my phone. I grabbed it out of the toilet, ripped the cover off and quickly dried it off with the closest towel. I ran into the bedroom and woke Joe up (which isn’t easy that early in the morning), said several unladylike words about what had happened and ended up powering down my phone and sticking it in a bag of rice.

Not really having another option, I jumped in the shower, toweled off and quickly got dressed. To say I was mad is a complete understatement. I use my phone for pretty much everything from setting my alarm to get up in the morning, to refill prescriptions, blogging, texting, taking pictures, looking up recipes, calling people, music for working out, games for Taelin while waiting somewhere…you get the point. It was as I was washing my hands after doing my makeup that I went from ‘mad’ to ‘mad and grossed out’. I realized the towel I had just used to dry off after my shower was the very same towel that not ten minutes earlier had been used to dry off my phone. Disgusting.

Not having time to jump in the shower again to start all over, I said a few more unladylike words and finished getting ready. Except that I couldn’t find my glasses. Yep…you guessed it. They were in the toilet too. Even more disgusting. I cleaned those the best I could without scalding my fingers, dried them with a different towel, grabbed my keys and headed up to the airport.

I will spare you the rest of the details of all the things Joe tried but my phone is dead.
And my cat, somehow, isn’t.

Before anyone gets too concerned, the cat is fine. She, unlike my phone and glasses, did not fall in the toilet. She likely slipped on her landing and just grabbed onto anything she could as she fell…that anything being my stuff. She still has been fed everyday although I will say it is probably a good thing that Joe’s mom was here to make sure that happened. So far, nobody has taken me up on my offer to deliver the cat so she is staying.

In the meantime, I am without a phone. My contract wasn’t even close to being up and the replacement cost, since we didn’t have insurance, isn’t an option. (Won’t make that mistake again.) I am sure I won’t get anything as nice as I had. And while it is just a phone and it is just money, the one thing that I did get teary about is the camera. There were so many times that I grabbed it to capture a moment, mostly of Taelin but not always, and I there is no way that I will let us spend the money to get a phone with a camera as good as the one I had. It is a silly thing to be upset about and in the grand scheme of things not even really a problem but every time I do think about it another unladylike word just slips out.

Hopefully we will be able to get something for me in the next day or two before we head to Sunriver. Maybe if I practice my storytelling and keep my unladylike words to a minimum, someone will take pity on me by either giving me a break on a new phone or taking the @#&%!*$ cat.